


A Dapper Beginning

by FalseRoar



Series: Can You Wake Up? [6]
Category: Who Killed Markiplier? (Web Series), markiplier - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Mark Fischbach Egos, Post-Who Killed Markiplier?, Sean McLoughlin Egos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 23:03:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20182180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FalseRoar/pseuds/FalseRoar
Summary: A prequel story taking place before Can You Wake Up? -- Jack decides to check in with Mark after the last part of Who Killed Markiplier goes up and they take some time to discuss old memories, the still-recovering District Attorney, and plans for new videos. When Jack creates a new character for his upcoming Halloween video, Mark can't help noticing there's something... familiar about him. But hey, it's probably just a coincidence.Right?





	A Dapper Beginning

Jack glanced away from his phone screen for a minute to check the clock again and do some rough math in his head. Yeah, he was fairly sure this was an okay time to call, but he thought it might go to voicemail before Mark’s face appeared on the screen, looking slightly off to the side.

“Uh, hey Seán.”

“Hey Mark, is now a good time to talk or…?”

“Huh?” Mark focused on the screen and said, “Yeah, now’s fine, just…hanging out at the hotel. Might need to keep it down a bit.”

“I’ll try not to yell, but no promises,” Jack said, very aware of how awkward this conversation was going so far. Mark seemed really distracted, not that he could blame him. “How’s the tour going?”

“Good, great,” Mark said, nodding a few times. “We’ve worked out a few issues and I think we’ve really got something going here. Uh, once the others get back we’re going to head over to the theater and run through a few exercises Dan has planned to kind of loosen up before tonight, so I’m really looking forward to that. Don’t have to worry about any more last-minute editing for a while, so that’s nice too.”

His smile was a little forced at that last part, and Jack took the opportunity to talk about the reason he called.

“Yeah, I saw the video earlier.” Jack paused. The last part of Who Killed Markiplier had been…interesting, even if Mark had pretty much told him the whole story a while back now, more than what was shown in the videos. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Mark said, too overly cheery to sound sincere. “It’s good to get it out there, you know? Cathartic, that’s the word, right?”

“And, uh, the others?”

“Well, I mean, Tyler and the Detective were okay enough to help out, more or less, and I was able to pay that crazy Chef enough to play his part. He seemed to enjoy yelling at everybody.”

Jack rubbed at his eye with his free hand that wasn’t holding the phone and said, “Uh, what about the…y’know, other two. I mean, that was you in the video playing them too, right?”

“It’s not like I was about to get them involved,” Mark pointed out. He leaned his head against what looked to be the cream-colored wall behind him and sighed. “Yeah, I’ll probably hear from the Edge Lord when I get back home, but he knew this was coming. As for the Col—Wilford, he never watches my videos, and I doubt Dark is about to tell him and risk another Valentine’s Day incident.”

“What about Y/N?”

Mark looked away from the phone again, and Jack watched his eyes trail from right to left like he was watching something.

“Mark?”

Mark shook his head, and for the first time Jack noticed that he was wearing earbuds. Were there other people around?

“No, not yet. Actually, they haven’t really come out of the mirror in a while, and this might be a bit…much,” Mark admitted. He messed with his hair a bit, probably having caught a glimpse of himself in the phone’s camera.

“Are they…doing okay?” Jack asked. He still hadn’t met Y/N, even though Mark had told him a lot about the District Attorney and their current situation.

Mark sighed again. “Well, they’re not doing any worse? But it’s hard to tell what they remember from one day to the next, and they still haven’t said a word since…Since I found the mirror.”

Jack heard the hesitation and tilted his head a bit but didn’t ask.

“I’ve actually been playing with some ideas for videos after the tour is over that they might be able to help out with. Dr. Iplier thinks getting out some more might be good for them.”

“Still weird there’s nothing from back then about you guys,” Jack said, realizing a second too late that it might sound like he didn’t believe Mark. “I mean, the house is still there, right?”

Mark shuddered. “Yeah, but I don’t care what’s in there now, I’m never going back, and neither is Y/N. That house we filmed in was bad enough. We’ve all looked, and Amy and Kathryn did a lot of research before we started filming and they weren’t able to find anything on us. It’s like we never even existed.”

“Well, what about people you knew back then?” Jack asked. “Have you ever tried tracking down them or their relatives, see if any of them remember you?”

Mark grimaced. “From what Ben—I mean, Tyler and the Detective have said, they tried to get in touch with the few friends they had after that weekend and it was like nobody even knew who they were. Granted, neither was a people person back then, and I’ll admit to not having very many close friends at the time to go back to, but it was still strange. No one even remembered Damien, much less that he had been mayor, and it was like my acting career had never even existed. As for Y/N…”

Mark paused, thinking.

“Huh. I guess Damien and I were kind of their closest friends in university? At least, I don’t remember anyone else, and their family…Well, tracking down any living relatives now would be difficult for a lot of reasons.”

“What about as a lawyer? Any clients they worked with, uh…Other lawyers?” Jack suggested, but Mark shrugged, his expression confirming that he was drawing a blank. “Come on, they must have known other people.”

“Well, _sure_, but it’s not like we kept in touch after university. I mean, my acting career took off, Damien was working the political scene as an aide and then running for mayor, and they were off becoming District Attorney, apparently. Honestly, I think the last time I saw them before the poker party was at the celebration for Damien becoming Mayor, and we didn’t even get to talk then.”

“Why not?” Jack asked, a little surprised.

“Uh, well, Celine and I, we were…” He hesitated, but before Jack could tell him he didn’t need to say anything Mark said, “It was a rough patch. Point is, I didn’t have much time for catching up with old friends, especially ones who might ask a lot of questions.”

Mark looked less than proud at the admission, but he recovered quickly and added, “I don’t think Y/N knew anyone there either. I remember seeing them kind of avoiding most of the others, which considering the sort of people there, I can’t blame them. Bunch of politicians and over-hyped celebrities like me.”

He looked to the side, this time with his eyes narrowed as if racking his memory. This lasted so long that Jack glanced at his clock again, wondering how much time they had before Mark would need to meet up with the others before the show.

Mark surprised him by laughing a little, and Jack glanced back in time to see him smiling at some memory. “Sorry, I just remembered, that was probably the only time I’ve ever seen them dance. God, you should have seen the look on Damien’s face.”

“They danced with Damien?” Jack asked, already smiling as he prepared to follow up, but Mark shook his head.

“No, it was this actor, well, _‘actor,’_ he was famous for work in moving—I mean, silent movies,” Mark said, not even trying to keep the condescension out of his voice.

“Ah, I love those old silent movies! Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton! The physical comedy, facial expressions, just the whole style of it,” Jack gushed and Mark only winced a little at the word “old.” “Do you remember his name?”

“Yeah, yeah, they had a…style,” Mark said. He thought a bit, running a hand through his hair again as he tried to remember, but he went with another shrug. “His name…started with a ‘J’, maybe? Or a ‘D’? No, I’m drawing a blank. I was never into those movies back then, and it’s not like I ever saw him again.”

Jack looked a little disappointed and Mark added, “Sorry?”

“What? Oh, nah, I was just hoping I could look him up and see some of his work, maybe get some reference,” Jack said. “I doubt someone they met once would help Y/N much.”

“Reference?” Mark asked.

“I, uh, have been playing with this idea for a silent movie, comedy-style skit for Halloween,” Jack admitted. “You know, something a little light to take people’s minds off of…last year.”

“Have you had any issues with _him_ lately?” Mark asked.

“No, I mean…Not any more than usual,” Jack said, rubbing at the back of his neck and not quite meeting Mark’s eyes. “But maybe if I can get the fans to focus on something else around then, it might help. Worth a shot, right?”

“Yeah, sure,” Mark said, nodding. “It sounds like a great idea. Let me know if you need any help with that, or with the…other thing, okay?”

He sounded sincere enough that Jack was almost able to forget his earlier less than enthusiastic view of silent movies.

They spoke a little longer before a tone came from Mark’s phone and he said, “Oh, that’s Amy. The others are almost back to the hotel, I should go meet them down in the lobby.”

“Okay, good tal—” Jack paused, having caught something in the camera as Mark stood up. A number on the wall, like you would see on the _outside_ of a hotel room door. “Wait, have you been sitting in the hallway this whole time?”

“I might have locked myself out of the hotel room. Again.”

Mark let Jack laugh for about five seconds before he said, “Yeah, bye Seán, talk to you later,” and ended the call on him without waiting for a response.

After the first leg of the tour ended, Mark was so caught up in the van vlogs with you that he almost forgot about the conversation until Jack tweeted a photo of himself just a couple of days before Halloween with the words, _[“Feelin’ Dapper!”](https://twitter.com/Jack_Septic_Eye/status/924762030355156993)_

Mark stared at the photo of his friend, posing in a waistcoat, monocle and bowler hat with a thick black false mustache above his lips. Something buzzed in the back of his mind, but he brushed it off. It couldn’t be…Right?

As if in answer to the question he tried not to consider, the photo that came the next day was captioned, _[“Oui oui!”](https://twitter.com/Jack_Septic_Eye/status/925146743020445696)_

Mark was waiting for Jack’s Halloween video when it came out the day after that, when his calls went unanswered. He kept a hand over his mouth the entire time, trying to write off the uneasy feeling in his stomach as he watched Jack’s antics, and he let out an audible groan when he saw the first glitch.

He left another message, but it wasn’t until later that night that Jack called him back.

“What time is it there?” Mark asked by way of greeting.

Jack shrugged. It was difficult to tell if he was really paler than normal or if that was just a trick of the lighting, but he still looked dead tired even as he tried to joke, “You sound like my Twitter followers.”

“I saw the video.”

“…Yeah.” Jack winced and rubbed at his neck. “I saw that went up while I was ‘out.’ Robin did what he could to edit it, but there’s only so much he can do without _him_ getting involved.”

“You could have not posted it,” Mark pointed out.

“Tried that last year,” Jack said, still rubbing at his neck. As far as Mark could tell there was nothing there, but it seemed to be bothering him. “He just glitches his way into every other video, and it’s not worth…”

He sighed and changed the subject. “There’s another one.”

“Another…? You have a new ego?” Mark asked and Jack nodded. “From the Halloween video? What’s his name? Has he told you anything about himself?”

Jack shook his head. “He can’t tell us anything. As far as we can tell he’s mute, not that that’s stopped him from trying to talk to us. I think…I think it’s because of the video.”

“Hey, it’s not your fault,” Mark said when he heard the tone in Jack’s voice. “We’ve talked about this before, with the Bro Average thing, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I just…” Jack pinched the bridge of his nose and took a long, slow breath, in and out. “We’ve tried getting him to write, but it doesn’t seem like he remembers much of anything. He doesn’t even seem sure of his own name.”

“Well, the same thing happened with that magician, right?” Mark pointed out. He tried hard not to think about any similarities to you and your current situation. “Once the fans get to know him and flesh him out he’ll have more to tell you. Just give it time.”

“His first video, and _he_ shows up,” Jack said softly before looking at Mark. “What are the fans going to make of that? What’s it going to do to him?”

Mark hesitated. He didn’t have much of an answer. After all, most of his egos had relatively trouble-free debuts, and they all still came out like egotistical maniacs. _Just like their creator, _a part of him he preferred to ignore pointed out.

“The others are keeping an eye on him for now,” Jack said when Mark failed to answer. He rubbed his neck again and after some time added, “It feels like I’ve barely been back and I’m already thinking about another break.”

“Might not be a bad idea,” Mark said. This year had hit him pretty hard after all, even before this. They talked a little longer before Mark finally convinced Jack to try and get some sleep. After that, he didn’t hear from him for a while beyond the occasional update.

One text in particular caused Mark to startle you one day as you both were about to get out of the van and he quickly said, “Sorry, just remembered something.”

The text from Jack had a picture of his egos around the newest one, all smiling and waving at the camera. Below that were the words, _“Looks like he’s settled on one of the fan names. Meet Jameson Jackson – JJ!”_


End file.
